heading for the Doc’s, I’ll be working at home later, looks like my foot is indeed in need of medical attention…

Talking to Matt Domsch, Dell Linux technology lead, over coffee this morning, Matt gave me an idea to try ping.fm – I’ve set-up all my accounts and this is the only status updates I’m going to do that will go to all my active social networking sites. Let’s see…

Normal service will be returned following this!

Dell Management Console and 11G Server Launch

I spent Friday afternoon in a wet Round Rock parking lot where we held the launch thank you party for the team that put together the 11th Generation of Dell servers and the associated management software. We don’t complain about rain in Austin, it feeds some of the best things about town, namely Barton Springs, Lake Travis, which feeds Town Lake where I run, and the lake at Pure Austin North where I swim, in perfect conditions, twice per week. The celebration was sponsored by our partner Broadcom.

The event was hosted by our executives, including Michael Dell, and they made some important observations on the process to design the servers, market acceptance and customer feedback. While I was waiting in the food line, one the other folks and I got talking, he said “I looked at your blog the other day and you didn’t write anything on the Dell Management Console”. And he’s right.

It’s a significant step forward for Dell customers and for Dell. The DMC is based on the modular Symantec Management Platform architecture and offers a comprehensive set of features at no additional cost. While I was in IBM Power Systems, one of the fights I had with them was over their console and management strategy. While I’m sure they had good reasons the way they did, what they did, their ongoing strategy couldn’t follow the same path of fragmented consoles for this, consoles for that, different interfaces, different terminology for the same things etc. I’m hopeful still that when they introduce their next generation of servers, they’ll have learned the lessons that Dell already has.

DMC replaces the existing Dell hardware management console, Dell OpenManage IT Assistant. DMC has a plug-in architecture that allows the console to be extended with additional function and to be used as a manager for other scenarios, devices etc. However, true to the Dell mission to simply IT, Reduce TCO and one way we are doing that is to included a significant amount of function in the base, rather than as chargeable plugins. Here’s a summary of the major functions and improvements over prior offerings:

• Hardware - multiple choices on how to explore, report and understand hardware configs plus export as tables; many pre-configured reports asd well as the ability to create your own.

  Proactive heartbeat monitoring is also supported, based on a user defined schedule; event suscription is also supported for Dell servers and MIBs can be imported for non-Dell hardware.

  You can push config changes and agent, BIOS, driver and firmware patches to many servers simultaneously without scripting.

• Security – you can group devices and servers by geographical, logical, organisztional or type, or create your own. These can then be managed using role based secuity. You can create your own roles, or import them from Microsoft Active Directory.
• Software – Support for hypervisors such as VMware(r) ESXi as well as Microsoft and Citrix. Health monitoring, discovery of virtual machines, associate to physical host server etc. Also included is the normal OS monitoring of utilization for memory, processors, free space and I/O.
• Networking – The console includes support for a broad range of devices, but also includes support for Fibre Channel switches.

Thats an outline of the support in the new Dell Management Console, powered by Altiris from Symantec. I went to look for a couple of white papers to include links for. One with a more detailed list of device support and a second with a more comprehensive strategy that showed the plug-in architecture and the other function available for DMC. I came across this great resource, the Dell POWER Solutions magazine(just a hint of irony).

Here is a link where you can download the entire magazine, as a 21Mb PDF file. Alternatively, here is a link for an index into the articles where you can review each article seperately.

Moo cards II

When I first created “business” moo cards, it created quite a bit of a stir. So I figured I’d post the moo cards II the next generation design. Unfortunately I didn’t get organised early enough to get them for this weekends AustinBarCampIV, so I’ll be using the standard Dell ones if needed.

I actually found a useful feature of PowerPoint 2007. If you import the image(s). and the text on top, then select all the elements, you can export as a single file, rather than a ppt file or doing a screen copy and then saving with another program. Go ahead, make your own

Short DNS and brand ownership

I cycle home Wednesday evenings and back in on Thursday morning, it’s a 22-mile drag from Round Rock to Down Town Austin, with some quiet bits, some busy bits and some dangerous bits. While spinning up North Lamar heading south  towards 183, I was thinking about the rise of web URL shortnening websites such as tinyurl.com, which was the first I was aware of that offered a free service to take a long url such as this blog entry http://cathcam.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/short-dns-and-brand-ownership/ and turn it into http://snipurl.com/shorterdns

The main reason these became really popular was becuase some systems, such as Lotus Notes used to produce bizzare, very, very long URL’s for pages in Notes databases. It was easier to remember tinyurl.com/ae5ny than it would be to remember the page name, try it… Now, people these days know these services for twitter.com where every character counts, but thats not how or why they started.

There are a bunch of these services, tinyurl.com, snurl.com, is.gd, bit.ly etc. I tend to use snurl as it allows you to save specific names, I’m sure other shortners do too. What I was thinking about last night was the ownership, rights etc. to shortened URLs.

When my son wanted some cards from http://moo.com to help him promote his DJ work, I created them for him, but his myspace URL didn’t easily fit and flow, and what if later he wanted to create a website, he’d have to get new cards.

Answer, use snurl. So Oli and his alter ego Kaewan are now http://snurl.com/kaewan - It currently points to his myspace profile, but I can change it whenever I want. 

So these services have become, in some way, analgous to Domain Registrars. Sure a short URL isn’t a domain, but effectively it’s the same as one, except you don’t own it, and you didn’t have to pay for it. For fun I created http://snurl.com/redmonk - It actually points to Redmonks home page. But it could easily point elsewhere. And there’s the rub. With a traditional Name regsitrar there is an established right of review and appeal if you believe that someone has registered a domain that impinges on your brand and trademarks.

Not long after I created this blog, original DNS http://ibmcorner.com _ I got a “cease and desist” call from IBM legal pointing out that this wasn’t allowed and I should stop using it and not re-register the domain when it expired. SO where does http://snurl.com/ibm point to? Well not IBM and is was nothing to do with me.

(Belated) Leaving drinks in London

Since I’m coming over to the UK to get my new machine readable visa inserted in my passport, it’s a great opportunity for a “leaving drink”. So consider this an open invitation to all my former IBM UK Colleagues, either current or past, and any customers, analysts, journalists or consultants that I worked with.

I’ll be at the Archduke on Concert Hall Approach between IBM South Bank at Waterloo Station from 5.30pm onwards on February 23rd to buy drinks. I was going to say I’d be easy to find since I’ll be the one in cowboy boots and hat, but that would be an untrue stereotype for Austin, and decent cowboy boots are expensive, and I doubt I can find a hat big enough for my head – So I’ll pass on that idea.

If you can make it along it would be great to see you, even if you just have time to stop in and say “goodbye”. Feel free to add a comment if you can or can’t make it, in case I need to make any special arrangements with the Archduke.

More history rewrites

One of todays cyber storms is the release of Googles Chrome browser. It comes with it’s own comic book style explanation which includes some major rewrites of history, including a few geographical snafus as the Register points out.

However, my favorite is the one on page-4 where it says “We’re applying the same kind of process isolation you find in modern operating systems” – Like err, address spaces in the 1970’s mainframe systems. Just because Windows was borked doesn’t mean everything else is… but then if Google says its true, it must be. So how radical is the concept of running tabs as processes and freeing up all the memory when you close a tab… not very.

Oh yeah, and I remember around 1985 when the VM/SP pubs team first used cartoons to explain topics in some of the VM/SP manuals, so even thats not new google. Still nice to see the youngsters re-invent the old, maybe next up will be google coke, if you put a dirty penny in it, it cleans it… Wow.

Having said that, I’ll be trying out Google Chrome, muppet I know.

Repair, Refurbish or redesign?

I posted this as a response to some of the very short sighted comments and rant going on over on PoguesPosts, the latest in Technology from NY Times reporter/columnist David Pogue. The topic was about replacing a broken screen on an iPhone and the $245 cost.

Universally though both David and all 108 posters before me seemed to completely miss is the opportunity to do things better, not to gripe about Apples costs, or the poor or otherwise design of the iPhone. So, here’s my take on it.

“I think the point is that we and the companies that we buy from, HAVE to start being much more responsible with our electronic goods from the point of design.

Is it unreasonable to expect the designers of one of the best gadgets in the last few years to think about how they are serviced, refurbished and disposed of, I think not.

We simply can’t go on forever buying stuff and dumping the old, unwanted broken stuff without regard. The designers have their part to play in this, as do the companies that sell us stuff. Why didn’t the designers expect to see a reasonable amount of broken screens? Why isn’t there a reasonably priced refurbishment program that replaces the outer case, scratched glass etc.

This is an important challenge and one we all need to rise to. It is simply not good enough to just keep dumping old electronic devices with no regard to where the raw materials, components for the next one come from, and where the waste goes from the last one.

Shame on Apple for not making it easier to replace a broken screen, shame on Apple for not providing a more cost effective repair service.”

{Edit: What really made me think of reposting this was because when I read the posted version(uneditable) I realised I’d missed a vital NO in “no regard” in the 2nd from last paragraph.}

Super-dense systems

Newtons 3rd law of motion is in essence “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”.

When x86 and rack systems couldn’t scale up to handle the demands of modern computing, they scaled out. Scale out systems are OK to a point, but soon the complexity and cost of scale out becomes a real hurdle and building plumbing isn’t what most businesses want to pay their employees to do.

The IBM reaction to this has been the recent announcement of two super-dense systems. These are server consolidation platforms on steroids. Earlier this month we announced the new POWER6 “Hydro-Cluster” supercomputer, the Power 575, which has upto 448 processor cores per rack. Today see’s the press announcement of the IBM iDataplex server, an x86-based super-dense server.

In case the benefits of a super-dense system are not obvious, the weekends mysterious video has re-appeared on YouTube. iDataplex is currently a custom build offering rather than a product, and can be built with a range of different cores and boards to suit the application from low power, low heat to high function high power.

The press release on iDataplex is here and the video here.

Chinposin Friday

I never really got casual Friday. Here at IBM, Friday pm is Think Friday, no repetitive meetings, time to think and urgent meetings only. Yep, I wear my jeans in on Fridays and try to catch up on email, not much time to think. Casual Friday for me though is more than clothes, it’s a state of mind thing for me, that stems back to my time at Chemical Bank out on Long Island, NY in the early 1980’s.

When we started at the data center, the place was still a building site and we wore what we liked. Over the next 15-months though things quietened down, other people started working in the office and a bunch of mid-20’s mainframe geeks with t-shirts, sometimes shorts etc. stuck out a bit for a bank. Then the day came, my boss, Phil Gross, pointed out we were possibly amongst the highest paid people in the building, we were paid to think smart, and so we should dress smart. From then on it was back to normal shirt/tie etc, apart from the twice yearly lobster parties in the parking lot. One day perhaps we’ll get John McNic to start a web site with pictures, hopefully I’ll be retired by then…

So now we have chinposin Friday. If you are on twitter or flickr, post a picture that reflects you in a chinposin mood. This week I’ve been reflecting on my past and my future, so this chin pose is a good summary. Great fun, pretty simple, some people have been doing very funny things! Here’s to chinposin.

Have a great Christmas!

[Edit: Jan/8/2008. Removed graphic, you can see it here.]

I’ll be posting at least on one topic over the holidays, although a few have got me sparked up, @monkchips post on Erlang and why Amazon doesn’t need IBM, at least.

Not sure how much access to my ibm email I’ll have. I’m heading back to Europe today with four laptops, this one, the two I’ve been using for grid and web services development, and my prior IBM UK laptop. Turns out they want them all back.

Taking four laptops through security was fun! If you need to get in touch urgently either contact me through Twitter, or use google to find my personal email address. It’s not hard but I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader.

OT: Verifying WordPress blogs for Google Webmaster

Credit jalaj who posted this workaround to get wordpress based blogs verified for Google Webmaster tools. His blog entry is here.

And back again

The first one didn’t work, here is a another trackback

Testing trackbacks from cathcam

I’ve posted two trackbacks this week to non-WordPress blogs and neither showed up. This is a test to see if they show up here…

I’m a “centerprise” architect, no honest, I am!

After some intense work on a couple of key futures projects, one on SOA and System p; the other on processor threading architectures; I had a couple of minutes today to catch-up with some of my RSS feeds before heading out the door and catching the last flight up to NY for the annual IBM STG Senior Leadership meeting.

Two things in the feed list grabbed my attention, both from RedMonk, although one from the self-appointed RedNun(dangerously close to something I grew to loathe in the seventies, Blue Nun, but that’s another story).

First, James Governor “outed” me and my new business cards on the Mainframe blog. I didn’t so much the resent the outing, I think it was the notion that I’d gone from zSeries to System p that hurt. I never saw it that way, I’ve just come over to System p to do a job, it’s just technology mate.

Then I read Annes’ useful piece on Open Source ESBs and Decentralised SOA development. For an op.ed piece I’m with this entirely and not about to leap to defend the usual suspects. However, reading it I just couldn’t get past the words “decentralised” and “distributed”. In IT these are emotionally loaded terms.